In many ways, At Her Feet: Powering Your Femdom Relationship by TammyJo Eckhart & Fox is the factual counterpart of my novel Dommemoir. Both offer a glimpse of one woman’s journey into the world of FemDom along with the thoughts from the male at her feet. In telling her story, TammyJo shares a lot of practical tips and wisdom that she gathered along the way. I very much wish that such a book had been available to me when I first recognized and started exploring my own identity as a FemDom.

As TammyJo says: “Today you can barely find an online community where the sidebars aren’t riddled with … so-called femdoms in collars and impossibly high heels screaming profanities at the rather ugly men cowering before them.”

I never related to those concepts of FemDom. I never did understand why the so-called Mistress would be the one wearing the collar and I can’t wear heels of any height. More importantly, I want the man kneeling at my feet to be attractive, sexy, and macho.

In At Her Feet, TammyJo explains: “You start to figure out what really works for you and what doesn’t, and then you can begin to make conscious decisions about what to reject from the femdom model and what to embrace. When you start simply being dominant, for example, while wearing teddy bear slippers or torn sweatpants, and are still able to get your submissive to kneel at your feet with a mere word or look, you have crossed over to the mature state of femdom development.”

Now that statement resonated with me, as did: “We find it particularly amusing but also frustrating when the woman complaining about how all men are only interested in sex is wearing an outfit featuring a tight corset or thigh-high boots…Wear what empowers you as a femdom, but be realistic about the messages you are sending out.”

I set out to read At Her Feet with an open mind — interested in learning what another FemDom writer had to say about the dynamic, prepared to find many points of disagreement. But, except for a few common misconceptions about sociology,* I found the book informative, interesting and easy to read.

It contains a wealth of practical information that I believe would be useful to women (and men) trying to figure out what they need and want from a Femdom relationship. As the authors state: “If you’re struggling, then we think our experience might open your mind so you can re-examine what you both want and work on making his kneeling at her feet one of the best relationships of your life.”

I particularly found refreshing the acknowledgment of terminology ambiguity in statements like: “Words such as ‘master,’ ‘mistress,’ ‘slave,’ ‘pet,’ or whatever else you want to choose do not have fixed, universally-recognized meanings.”

As I wrote recently in a post about BDSM labels , there are many misconceptions, especially among males who misidentify as submissive, about the dynamics involved in a FemDom relationship.

TammyJo and Fox are frank about sharing the day-to-day realities of making a Femdom/slave relationship work: “We have play time and sex, and we make special plans to do complex scenes. That’s wonderful, but those ties are not what fuels this relationship day in and day out. … Instead, we are strengthened by the continual use of some rules, rituals, and protocols and our open acceptance of each other’s needs and desires. … Those are the things that will give you the power to last a lifetime.”

That echoes what I’ve written over and over in numerous e-mails and what my character, Alyssa, says in Broken: “My domination and his submission form the foundation of our relationship. The sadism and masochism are spice when we have time and I’m so inclined.”: Domination and submission are the important part of the equation, what you build a relationship on.”

If you’re new to FemDom, fantasize about it, or are trying to make it work in your relationship, I highly recommend At Her Feet: Powering Your Femdom Relationship.

*The only passages I took exception to are some of the “scientific” explanations where the authors quote erroneous information that’s been accepted as “facts” for decades or even centuries. For example, they rely on Abraham Maslow to define the difference between needs and wants. But his theory about the hierarchy of needs was never verified and indeed has been disproved in recent years by A. Mari Schaaf-Southard in Maslow and the Work Place, University of Michigan, March 2008. (Disclosure: I was on the advisory committee for that study.)

In addition, the authors fall back on questionable explanations of human pair bonding with statements such as “having either two producers or one producer with someone else to guard the material acquired or created has been a principal way families have survived since the beginning of time.” Christopher Ryan, Ph.D. and Cacilda Jethá, M.D. showed this to be part of a culturally tainted world view in Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality.

~

At Her Feet: Powering Your Femdom Relationship by TammyJo Eckhart & Fox (978-1890159795 : Greenery Press, available for $10.17 at Amazon)

“How do you identify?” is a loaded question, no matter who’s asking. The query can refer to your gender, sexual orientation, or role in the BDSM lifestyle. In all cases, binary or even ternary systems leave many people out and can create a great deal of confusion, especially online.

With one exception (to my knowledge) every BDSM networking site offers only three or four labels from which to choose: dominant, submissive, switch, and possibly slave. This has made it difficult for those interested in learning more about kink to figure out their place in the spectrum because they have no clue what identities are possible. I know of one exception. Fetlife currently offers a more realistic 15 choices for BDSM role (and 12 each for gender and sexual orientation).

What follows is my opinion of what some labels mean. I don’t hold myself out as an authority. But, I am a FemDom (and a top) and I own a submissive who lives in my home, serving me 24/7. I have spent a fair amount of time at various community events and also communicated with way too many online players. So for what it’s worth …

 Domme: This term created controversy (and also confusion about how it’s pronounced). When I first signed onto Fetlife a few months after it went live, if you selected “female” and “dominant” you were automatically identified as a “Domme.” This did not sit well with many. In general, the term refers to a female dominant as does

FemDom: Personally, I prefer FemDom because being a dominant female does present significant challenges in a patriarchal society and the dynamic of a F/m or F/f relationship tends (but isn’t always) to be different than that of a M/f or M/m. Which brings us to:

Dominatrix is a professional who gets paid to top someone (usually male) in a BDSM scene. Often they’re not dominants. They deliver what their clients want when it’s wanted. Although their clients may profess to be submissive, in reality, they’re usually a

Bottom, someone who is a masochist or has other fetishes that puts them on the receiving end during a BDSM scene. Bottoms get bound, hurt, and/or humiliated, but they choose with whom they want to play and whatever form of play their scenes involve. They negotiate the level of restraint, pain, and degradation their scenes will include. Bottoms can use safewords to reduce the intensity level or stop the scene all together. The bottom’s role end when the scenes does, unlike a

Submissive: Online you can find endless lists of profiles in which the writers try to convince the reader how submissive they are using words like “well trained” and “obedient.” Then they go on to describe how much they enjoy pain, bondage, and “punishment.” A submissive is someone who serves, who cedes control of themselves and some or all aspects of their lives to their dominant in a relationship. Whereas bottoms ask tops to perform certain tasks for the bottoms’ (and presumably the tops’) pleasure, submissives enjoy serving their dominant’s needs, even when that means performing tasks they would otherwise find onerous. The ultimate example is the submissive who is not a masochist, but who takes pain from their sadistic dominant only because the dominant enjoys hurting them. Depending on the relationship, submissives may not have safewords. One can demonstrate submission during a scene. But, if one wants to be submissive in a Dominant/submissive (aka D/s) relationship, it works best if your partner(s) is a

Dominant: The key to domination is control. In D/s relationships, dominants make decisions about everything from what their submissive will wear and eat to whether and where they will work and play. How much control a dominant has can vary greatly and defines the relationship.  The parties involved negotiate the level of control and type of relationship, but for months and years, not the few hours or days that a scene might last. If you’re negotiating a scene, you’re probably doing so with a

Top: In a BDSM scene, the top administers restraint, pain, and humiliation. But tops only deliver what the bottoms have requested and agreed to.

None of the definitions above are exclusive. One can be, for example, a dominant top (common), a dominant masochist (not so common), a submissive bottom, or a submissive top. A submissive who tops a masochistic dominant, delivering pain in exactly the way it’s requested during a scene, may or may not be a

Switch, someone who can assume either role: top/bottom or dominant/submissive. Usually, the latter folks do not switch with the same person. They might be submissive to one person and dominant of another. Sadistic and masochistic (aka S&M) switches are more likely to change roles with the same person, although again some may only top different people than those they bottom to. Because switch can refer to either dominant/submissive or top/bottom, the term can become confusing so some folks prefer, in the latter case,

Sadomasochist, someone who enjoys both sadism and masochism. A

Sadist is often defined as someone who obtains pleasure from inflicting pain on others. However, that definition is missing a term. The word is derived from reference to stories about cruel sexual practices written by Count Donatien A.F. de Sade (who, despite modern references, was not a marquis). Paper dictionaries and psychiatric texts almost always include “sexual” in the definition. But online references often leave it out and many people claim not to find sexual gratification in certain S&M activities. Consensual sadism usually involves, on the receiving end, a

Masochist, referring to someone who gets sexual pleasure from being hurt or abused. The word derives from references to writing about bottoming sexually by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (born more than two decades after de Sade died). Again, online references may omit the word “sexual” from the definition.

I’m not going to try to define  Master or  Mistress (which requires diving into gender politics). Many folks believe the terms can refer only those who own property. Others will claim they are such, regardless of their relationship status. Controversy around the term “slave” starts with how one differentiates between a slave and a submissive and includes disagreement over whether someone can claim to be a slave if they are not owned property.

Labels can confuse anyone, especially someone new to the lifestyle. One advantage of in-person over online interaction is that you’re less likely to get trapped by a label that doesn’t accurately define you, preventing you from wasting too much time corresponding with a dominant looking for a service submissive when you really just want a top who will blister your bottom.

Over the past decade, I’ve attended a dozen or so writers’ conferences. But the Erotic Authors Association’s (EAA) Inaugural Conference, held September 9-10, 2011 at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, was more of a reunion than a conference.

Don’t get me wrong. The event included all those things that make a writers’ conference wonderful: great workshops, fabulous networking opportunities, panels with editors and publishers talking about what they would like to see (and not see) from writers and the opportunity to spend a weekend with kindred spirits.

Of course, this event had many features not usually found at writers’ conferences, including many of the workshop subjects (Queer Erotica, Taboos, Your Sex Life as Story Fodder, and Hands on Kink to name a few). Also spicing things up were One Very Steamy Las Vegas Evening at the Erotic Heritage Museum Event, readings of erotica that could keep you wet/hard throughout each day, a rope bondage demonstration at the closing cocktail party, a cupcake orgy, and more swear words than most non-erotica writers hear in a year.

But for me, and many of the more than 80 other participants, what made the conference so special was the opportunity to meet in person for the first time colleagues we have known for years. We were constantly checking out each other’s name badges with exclamations of delight and exuberant hugs erupting when we encountered someone with whom we had a special relationship. I met authors/editors/publishers who have purchased my stories, appeared with me in anthologies, shared radio air time, reviewed my books, published my blog posts, etc.

Cecilia Tan of Circlet Press and  Lori Perkins of Ravenous Romance teach e-publishing.

Although the conference started on Friday, folks arrived as early as Wednesday and many informal get-togethers occurred before registration opened. I finally got to meet D.L. King., author, anthologist, Erotica Revealed editor, and one of the conference organizers, Thursday morning when I dropped off my and Mahalia Levey’s (who was touring Hoover Dam with my submissive and her husband) contributions to the goodie bags.

Jean Roberta teaches Sexy Grammar.

Then, I had the opportunity to enjoy scrumptious chocolate delicacies (we mostly skipped lunch and went straight for dessert) with the amazing Cecilia Tan at Max Brenner. Cecilia and I have known each other for years and consider each other friends, but had never met. Sitting across the table from her, dipping our spoons into deep fudge chocolate cake and profiteroles fondue, we talked about everything from the intersection of speculative fiction and kink to our personal relationships.

That evening my submissive, Patrick, and I shared TexMex with the fascinating D.M. Atkins, omni-sexual, gender-queer, polyamorus, kinky writer, graphic designer, editor, and publisher with whom I’d only recently corresponded regarding the launch of Forbidden Fiction. We had a great time discovering how much she and I (and my submissive and her husbands) have in common.

Way too early the next morning (apparently there was a run on weddings for 9/10/11 which pushed back room availability), we lined up to collect our goodie bags along with purple-ribboned name badges, programs, etc. Joining D.L. King behind the table was the brilliant Kathleen Bradean who came up with the idea for the conference after being disparaged for writing erotica by a presenter at another conference. When she took over as director of EAA last year, she immediately started work to make it a reality.

Jolie du Pre reading.

Kathleen burst into almost hysterical laughter when someone told her the conference was one of the best-organized she’d ever attended. Having spent many hours on Kathleen’s side of the table for one of the largest writing conferences in the country, I assured her that the fact that those in attendance didn’t know about all the problems behind the scenes only proved what an amazing job she and the other organizers were doing.

At breakfast, I found myself sitting next to Hazel Cushion who started Xcite Books (now one of the UK’s largest erotic publishers). Two of my stories have found a home in Xcite e-book collections and it’s one of the outlets where I publish my own short story collections. Hazel Cushion also was one of the publishers who appeared on the first panel of the day along with M. Christian representing Renaissance E Books, Brenda Knight of Cleis Press, Lori Perkins of Ravenous Romance, and Cecilia Tan of Circlet Press .

Author and editor M. Christian.

As I mentioned, I’ve attended many writers conferences and they often start the day with panels from editors, agents, and/or publishers. But, I’ve never sat in the room for one of those panels where each and every participant is someone I’ve submitted work to (and in all but one case, although I can hope that will change, had acceptances from).

The morning proceeded with the need to make difficult choices between panel discussions, workshops, erotic readings and networking. Patrick, who was staffing the table where I had books for sale, researched less expensive lunch options and found one right next store. After the morning sessions, I headed over to the Victorian Café with the exquisite Jolie du Pre and the entertaining Jim and Zetta Brown from Scotland and Logical-Lust Publications. We grabbed the biggest table in the restaurant and I collected K.D. Grace, Sharazade, and Katie Salidas of Rising Sign Books who were sitting by themselves. Then, Patrick sent along Jean Roberta and her wife, Mirtha Rivera Mazuela, to join us, making us a party of nine at a table for eight. We lucked into an amazing waitress, who treated us all as her long-lost best friends while providing nearly perfect service. The conversation ranged from how-we-met tales to discussions of ways to increase book sales and maximize social media.

I made it back to the Flamingo just in time to catch K.D.Grace’s reading of a sizzling hot excerpt from her novel, The Initiation of Ms. Holly that involved sex on a Harley flying across the A-3. I doubt if there were any dry panties in the room.

K.D. Grace reading.

After the last workshop, Cecilia Tan invited everyone to a Circlet Press party. We crowded into her room for wine, cheese, chocolate and great company. A few passer-bys who tried to crash the party were both taken aback and impressed to find a room full of (mostly) women who write wank-off stories.

The evening culminated with a trip to the Erotic Heritage Museum for the Erotic Literary Salon on tour. Surrounded by penis sculptures taller than we, interrupted twice by a boisterous performance from the Sin City Dolls burlesque dancers, Susana Mayer, Ph.D. moderated hot and steamy five-minute readings from about 20 writers. Stories ranged the gambit of sexual combinations including male/male, female/female, female/male, male/male/female, female/hot wax, and male/ballet slipper. One of the most impressive performances was given by Laura Antoniou reading an extract of “That’s Harsh.”

Laura Antoniou reading an extract of “That’s Harsh” at the Erotic Heritage Museum.

Many raved exuberantly online about the evening, but my favorite quote came from Charlotte Gatto who tweeted “I discovered that it’s possible to be turned on by things that don’t turn me on.”

The next morning I finally got to meet Remittance Girl who’d ventured al the way from Southeast Asia to attend the conference. Our conversation, which included Cecilia Tan and D.M. Atkins lasted well into the first session of the morning. The second session, a panel on taboos moderated by author Kate Dominic, included Remittance Girl, Cecilia Tan, Blake C. Aarens, and Andrea Dale. One of the most interesting things to come out of the panel was a discussion about the fact that it’s more acceptable to show a young woman being raped than enjoying sex. According to D.M. Atkins, “The right to say “No’ should also include the right to say ‘Yes.’” The panelists also talked about, as Remittance Girl said: “why offending your readers might be a good thing.”

Another point made was that the stigma against erotica writers doesn’t extend to, say mystery writers. No one believes an author of murder mysteries has accumulated a collection of dead bodies or is facilitating murder. But, erotica writers are accused of encouraging everything from promiscuity to rape.

Panel on taboos: Cecilia Tan, Remittance Girl, Andrea Dale and moderator Kate Dominic.

The conference ended with a cocktail party that included Graydancer tying up the lovely Sharazade in a full-body rope harness, a submission call from Essemoh Teepee for Vegas Windows Audiobook Anthology, and a cupcake orgy courtesy of Retro Bakery who sent a dozen delectable cupcakes to Rachel Kramer Bussel. She photographed, sampled, and shared. I must admit, until that moment, I had never understood why she goes crazy over cupcakes. Now, I do.

Rachel Kramer Bussel with Retro Bakery cupcake and Cecilia Tan

Unwilling to let the conference come to an end so early in the evening, Aisling Weaver and Wyeth Bailey hosted an after party in their suite at the Cosmopolitan where they had chosen to stay after seeing a commercial called “Just The Right Amount of Wrong.”

I left this fabulous reunion/conference with an envelope full of business cards for new-found friends/colleagues, wonderful memories, and requests for more work than I’ll be able to produce. Despite the passage of a week since the conference, I’m still overwhelmed by all the conversations, connections, and acquired information. On Twitter writers who were there raved about what they learned and who they got to spend time with. Follow up e-mails continue the conversations.

Thanks again to Kathleen Braden, D.L. King, Nan Andrews, Kate Dominic, and Jolie du Pre for the incredible vision and hard work required to produce such an amazing conference. I’m looking forward to next year’s event.

*Thanks to D.L. King for the use of her photos.

Bob chortled and said “That’s a good way to starve to death.” I informed him that in the summer I’m able to purchase 80 to 90 percent of my groceries at the local farmers’ market (less than five miles from my house) and he retracted his statement.

Granted, I’m now able to live in Portland where in the summer one can literally find a farmers’ market every day of the week and a plethora of choices on the weekend. We even have weekly markets that stay open through the winter.

Still, sticking to a localvore diet takes a bit of effort and sometimes sacrifice. The best market, closest to my house, requires getting up at 9 a.m. on Sunday. Normally, we fall into bed around 4 a.m. so getting up that early that can be difficult. But, we drag ourselves out of bed most Sundays for the privilege of getting first pick .

And, I must confess, I don’t always successfully resist things like avocados, oranges, and bananas when I do go to our local market, New Seasons, especially in the winter when there aren’t as many choices in local produce.

But nothing compares to picnicking in a local park, eating sandwiches made with country bacon (which really shouldn’t be called bacon, it’s nothing like that processed stuff that crisps up when cooked), lettuce, and tomatoes from the market on bread made with Bob’s flours or enjoying what we call “market salad” — a bowl filled with fresh lettuce, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, scallions, snow peas, carrots, beets, and whatever else we found that week, topped with home made dressing.

In the summer, we finish our meals with sweet berries, juicy peaches and plums, or luscious cherries. Then, a localvore diet seems luxurious rather than sacrificial.

Over the years, I’ve turned down several short story contracts (some rather lucrative) because they included language acquiring all rights, in all formats, in perpetuity for a flat fee. Frankly, I can’t understand why authors sign these contracts, especially when, as is often the case, the dollar amount is quite low. Apparently, too many authors get so excited about being accepted for publication that they don’t read contract terms carefully. Or they read the terms while making assumptions about how a publisher operates (or used to) and incorrectly interpret the contract language based on those misconceptions.

Unfortunately, more and more lucrative markets with reasonable contracts have disappeared. Just recently I learned that Trojan Publishing in the UK, which has purchased five of my stories for three different imprints will stop producing print magazines.

Then, last month I saw a submission call from an editor who has produced many successful anthologies offering what I consider a reasonable fee. I wrote a story that was, in my opinion, perfect for her collection. While reviewing the submission guidelines to make sure it met them all, I happened on a link to the contract that I’d missed before.

Authors accepted for this anthology would be required to sign away “exclusive right to print, publish, reproduce, distribute and license” their stories “in all languages and in all formats … throughout the world … for the full term of copyright…” A young author who lives fifty years after signing such a contract, has given away the rights to their work for one hundred and twenty years. In addition, that language also could be interpreted to include audio, movie, and television rights, as well as rights for formats not yet invented. (The legality of that last option is questionable, but that doesn’t stop publishers from using it.)

During the last few months, I’ve read numerous blog posts and articles about indie and self publishing. Many of the authors who are choosing to self publish are rebelling against draconian contracts and publishers’ rights grabs. The contract above was the last straw for me.

Since then, I’ve researched options, studied formatting requirements, located art for covers, and rebuilt the short story page on my website. I put my first short story for sale on Smashwords June 1 and followed with additional stories each Wednesday.

I’m starting with works I’ve already had published in print. Most of those stories appeared in magazines and anthologies with limited (compared to the Internet) circulation. And, in order to acquire my story, fans had to purchase a collection of other works they may not have had interest in.

I can offer readers individual stories inexpensively (only 99 cents each) and collections of stories that share a theme for $1.99 to $3.49. When I write a new story, I don’t have to send it out to an editor, wait months (or years) for her to get back to me, risk a rejection, and possibly have to rewrite the story because it was written to specifications that another editor might not appreciate.

Now that I’ve learned the process, I can get a story published in a matter of days. It took almost three weeks to get my first story accepted into the Premium Catalog, which allows distribution to the major retailers including Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, and Apple. But, I had already started selling copies of my third story via Smashwords by the time the first one was accepted. (Update: Smashwords has since increased staff and time from upload to approval has decreased significantly.)

Caveat: I have a background in printing and graphic design. I’ve been involved in the publishing industry for decades and participated in its digital evolution. So, what was easy for me may be more difficult for others. Or, it may be something they don’t enjoy doing.

To anyone considering following my footsteps, I urge caution. If you’re not able to produce your ebook yourself, don’t be quick to sign up with a service that will format your book and design a cover for a percentage of your royalties. That allows you to get your book published without an up-front investment of time or money, but in the long run, it cold cost you dearly.

Let’s say you publish a book for $3.99. If you distribute it through Smashwords, your minimum royalty payment is $1.29 and most retailers pay more. If you sell just two books a day, you’ve earned $940 in a year. If your book is edited and ready to publish, you can get a basic cover produced with stock art and the formatting done for around $100. If you sign away your royalties, the entity that spent a few hours formatting your book and designing your cover will collect between $230 and $470 of that $940. And, they’ll collect that every year for the next seventy to one hundred years.

If you don’t have the skills to design a cover (and you don’t want to try to sell a book with less than a professional design) or the patience to learn how to format it, spend a few bucks now and save yourself hundreds over the decades to come.

Personally, I have fun designing covers and formatting ebooks. Not as much fun as writing, perhaps, but I very much enjoyed the process. (If you’d like assistance with editing, formatting, or cover design of your own book, contact me at http://pussycatpress.com/.)

I checked out the quiz and discovered that after one answers all the question, in order to get any results, one must hand over one’s Twitter user name AND password. Why in the world would anyone do that? How do they know what the quiz creator will do with that information? (Got a clue when I also saw apologies along the lines of “sorry if the ‘Crazy Writer’ poll spammed everyone, claiming they “didn’t realize it would do that.”)

No one creates Twitter quizzes, Facebook games, and applications such as Foursquare because they want to entertain you for free. They’re in it for money and they’re using YOUR data to get it. Every time you sign up for a Facebook game, for example, you give the developer of that application permission to access ALL your personal data, including your “private” e-mails.

Facebook stripped away almost all pretense at privacy (while claiming to enhance it) when it changed default settings to make anything posted on Facebook public unless the poster goes to great lengths to keep the information private. Many categories of information, including your name, profile photo, list of friends and fan pages, gender, geographic region, and applications no longer even have privacy settings.

If you choose to lock your Twitter page to “protect” your tweets, your followers can still retweet them. Your tweets show up on Google searches of your name. The United States Library of Congress is archiving every single tweet.

At least one man believes his home was burglarized as a result of announcements about his vacation to his Twitter followers. Yet the whole point of foursquare.com, as far as I can tell, is to tell everyone, via Twitter, where you are at any given moment, leaving yourself vulnerable. Even those who don’t participate in foursquare are urged by Twitter to add their location to each tweet.

Warns The Internet Patrol: “there is an inherent problem – dare we even say it – danger – with letting the world know where you are or, even, where you aren’t.

“For example, do you really want some Twitter whacko stalking you at your place of employment? Or following you to a restaurant? Or even to your home?”

Scambusters warns that “you should be aware of the amount and type of information you’re giving out that can be used against you.” Insurance companies are demanding access to online information about you without your explicit consent. Creditors are checking out your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

People have gotten fired, lost opportunities for employment, and had their disability benefits taken away because of Facebook postings. Companies have had brands and goodwill (albeit sometimes deservedly) destroyed by Twitter campaigns. Personally, I have “hidden” many of those on my Facebook friends list, because while I might want to know if they sold a story or won an award, I have no interest in reading about their activities on Farmville, etc.

Certainly, if you choose to hand over your passwords and other personal information to unknown developers, that’s your prerogative. Just don’t be surprised, or complain, when that data is used against you.

However, no scientific data exist to indicate that enforcement of these laws will reduce traffic accidents. In fact, a Highway Loss Data Institute study found “no reductions in crashes after hand-held phone bans take effect.”

“The laws aren’t reducing crashes, even though we know that such laws have reduced hand-held phone use, and several studies have established that phoning while driving increases crash risk,” says Adrian Lund, president of both the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an independent, nonprofit, scientific, educational organization, and its affiliate, HLDI.

Why? Because when drivers talk on cell phones, the risk of crashing is about the same whether the device is hand held or hands free. Talking on the telephone, or anything which takes the driver’s attention away from the road, causes the distractions that lead to accidents.

So why the rush to pass laws banning driving while talking on hand held cell phones? Walk into any store in a state where such a law has taken effect and you will find your answer. Every retail outlet of any size, whether it normally carries such merchandise or not, offers a huge display of Bluetooth headsets for sale, ranging in price from $20 to more than $100.

Suddenly you see the blinking blue light on everyone, including senior citizens who only recently figured out how to use a cell phone and folks who only carry their devices for emergencies and rarely use them.

The manufacturers, distributors, and retailers of hands-free headsets in states where the laws have passed make a killing convincing those who would never have a reason to acquire one they must now attach a wireless device to their ears. And, of course, government entities who survive on funding from writing tickets (more on that in a future post) will have another revenue stream.

Law for corporate profit — how our government operates these days.

I gave up my land line in 2003. Because my only telephone is a cell phone, I need a reliable provider. But I also expect decent customer service and I will not tolerate blatant corporate rip offs.

The problems began a year ago when I realized a few days before it ended, that I would go over my plan minutes for the month of January. I contacted Verizon and was told if I signed on for another year, I could get 100 additional bonus minutes. Sounded reasonable. After almost fifteen years, I had no expectation of going anywhere else. Unfortunately, when I got my bill, I was charged for 35 minutes with no credit given for the bonus minutes. I called, got an adjustment, and thought that was the end of it.

In May, when my submissive, Patrick, joined my household, I added another phone and upgraded my plan, increasing it by an additional 300 minutes. Since then, every attempt to utilize my 100 “bonus” minutes has resulted in overcharges. Even worse, I repeatedly have had customer service and supervisory personnel promise that they will take care of problems and that they will call me back, only to never hear from them again.

The scam Verizon runs works like this: the company claims that because I acquired the bonus minutes before I increased the amount of money I give them every month, the minutes are not shared between the two phones. They contend this, despite the fact that every month my online account “overview” shows those extra minutes in the total available for both phones to use. Verizon refuses to credit any of the 100 minutes to calls made by my phone. Instead, they put all the overage minutes on the second line so they can charge 45 cents a minute for them.

Under this fraudulent bookkeeping scheme, in order to use my “bonus” minutes, I would have to not use the second line for an entire month and put 800 minutes on one phone. Essentially, when I added a second line and additional minutes, Verizon stole the 100 minutes from me.

Unlike many consumers, however, I will not accept fraudulent practices on the part of a mega corporation without a fight. I have already filed complaints against Verizon with the Oregon Attorney General’s office of Consumer Fraud and the Federal Communications Commission. As soon as I can escape their contractual clutches without incurring outrageous “termination” fees, I intend to find another provider. And, of course, I will berate them online for abusing their customers as a warning to others who might consider using their services.

As I search for an alternative to Verizon, I am interested in learning more about others’ experiences with their cell phone providers. Feel free to comment here or contact me via e-mail to share your experience.

I remember the first article I ever sold–for a pittance to a small, community newspaper–featured a tattoo artist who had covered his own body in ink. I shot the photo that appeared with my words using a mirror so the reader could see both his back and his chest. The newspaper purchased the article and photo because at the time, the man had an unusual amount of ink and his shop was unique. Today, he would get lost in the crowd.

I found myself intrigued at the time (decades ago), but I had no interest in a needle touching my own skin. That changed over time although I’m not sure when I decided I might want art on my own body. I do recall desiring a tattoo for several years, but hesitating for a number of reasons. As a diabetic, I worried about medical consequences. I learned that the stringent regulation of tattoo artists in Oregon make the possibility of infection or contracting HIV or hepatitis remote. I also had to balance perceived stereotypes about people with tattoos against my own self image.

When I divorced, that self image went through some drastic realignment and I selected three roses on a thorny stem to celebrate a new life that included reclaiming my health, returning to my first love of writing fiction, and a better understanding of who I am as a woman. Although I had spent some time talking to the artist and scrutinizing photographs of her work, I arrived for my appointment with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.

When the needle first attacked the skin on my hip, I thought the discomfort minuscule. As the hour and a half dragged on, keeping still became more onerous than the increasingly painful application of bright red and green ink. But I loved the results and everyone who saw it raved about the detail, the color, the beauty of my roses.

I started to notice ink on others more. I would see the edge of a tattoo peeking out from someone’s shirt and look for an opportunity to get them to show me the rest. I became aware of how common and pervasive wearing ink had become among people of all ages.

I decided I wanted another tattoo and knew I wanted it on my breast. I had no idea what should go there, so I found excuses to frequent tattoo parlors and look at the flash art. On one of those excursions, I saw a stylized hummingbird. However, I knew no one at this tattoo parlor and did not feel comfortable putting my skin under just anyone’s needle. With a picture from the Internet of a hummingbird in the position I wanted and a tattoo in the style I had seen, an artist delivered the perfect sketch. By the time I was ready for ink, however, the woman who had done my first tattoo had decided to stay home with her baby.

I sought a new woman because I did not feel comfortable having a man putting a needle on my breast. That narrowed my choices of artist significantly. Although body mod studios had become almost as ubiquitous as coffee shops, finding women in the tattoo business then was still difficult. Finding a woman with experience who someone else would recommend presented quite a challenge. Again, that has changed. More and more women have worked as tattoo artists long enough to develop portfolios and earn recommendations.

Although I had spent years reaching a point where I had ink applied to my skin the first time and nine months to decide I needed a second tattoo, I knew where and what I wanted for my third piece of art on the drive home from my second. Not only did this third tattoo take longer and cost more my other two combined, but I learned too late that the place I had chosen–above my shoulder blade–apparently is more sensitive to pain than my hip or my breast. I captured my experienced in a poem I call “Art Work.”

Still, pain, cost, and the need to sit still aside, I do not think that the one tattoo I suffered for will be my last. And, I now understand people who mourn when they run out of skin to ink.

Below is an updated copy of my final (of three) posts. You can read comments on it there.

The bane of many authors has become even more ubiquitous in the Internet age. Now, the horror that requires us to drag ourselves away from writing stories to promote our work has been awarded a new, dreaded title: Platform.

At writers’ conferences and workshops, authors are lectured endlessly about the necessity of having a platform and how to build one. Allegedly authors are asked about their platforms by editors before they will read their work. Some authors have leveraged platforms into lucrative publishing contracts.

Unfortunately, while publishers expect authors to invest time and money in the marketing of their books, as M.J. Rose states: “We now have a situation where publishers are financially benefitting from the author’s efforts but the author is still getting paid the old way, without regard to how much we personally invest.” She covered that concern quite well in her editorial, “Publishers Must Change the Way Authors Get Paid,”on PublishingPerspectives.com so I won’t belabor that point here.

Personally, I’ve had a presence on the web for several years, but as one correspondent wrote a few months ago, my website is “utterly pants” (British slang for total crap). I coded it myself and couldn’t disagree with him. I’m a writer and although I have a basic understanding of HTML, I’m not a graphic designer.

Meanwhile, I’ve increased my presence on the web over the past year to help promote my novels. I tweet regularly. I’ve put up profiles on FaceBook, Goodreads, GLBT Bookshelf project, MySpace, and LinkedIn. I post to blogs here, on LiveJournal, and Fanny Press.

But anyone could have said my website is pants and I couldn’t have argued.

One reason, with which I’m sure many authors could agree, is because I already spend so much time promoting my work, I didn’t want to take another minute away from my writing. While promoting the novels that came out last year, Broken and Shattered, and the one that released last month, Dommemoir, I also still need to finish the one I drafted during National Write a Novel Month 2008. And, I am blocking out the novel I will draft next month during NaNoWriMo 2009.

Redesigning a website just wasn’t on my priority list. But even updating what’s there, adding all the information about and reviews of Dommemoir, for example, takes work. My submissive, Patrick, suggested he could learn HTML and take over that responsibility. However, working on the website drove home, for him, that it is pants.

Looking, as always, for additional ways to serve me, he requested permission to work on the design. On a Monday he showed me his idea and I loved it. Unfortunately, the beautiful site he envisioned made what I had up look even more pitiful. The more he worked on it, the more I wanted it up NOW. I had planned to (and did) appear on the Speakeasy Café that Thursday, and I had signed up to host the Circlet Press chat. Both will, I hope, drive traffic to my website. I didn’t want to drive traffic to a pants website when I could drive traffic to a gorgeous one.

My sweet boy put in ridiculous hours over the following three days. On Tuesday, I left him working on the website while I drove from Bellevue to Lynwood (Seattle area where I am staying for a few weeks) to meet with a friend/colleague to catch up and discuss an upcoming project. When I returned, five hours later, he had not eaten, drunk, or gone to the bathroom. He kept up a ridiculous pace through Thursday afternoon when the pages were uploaded to the Internet just before my appearance on the Speakeasy Café.

He still has some refinements to make. The shopping page requires a more work and he wants to learn how to add some cool features like RSS feed, music, and SEO tags. But the beauty that he created is visible on every page. And the website reflects my work as a writer: dark, erotic, and seductive.

I know I’m very fortunate to have someone so devoted and talented in service, a luxury most authors do not have. (Although, I’m aware of more than one well-known author who has had a website developed and maintained by a zealous fan.)

However it’s developed, building and maintaining any kind of web presence consumes vast resources. And time devoted to blogging, tweeting, etc. is time not spent writing stories.  In the long run, if I don’t sell books, I won’t be able to get any future ones published. But, it’s easy to get bogged down with promotions and have difficulty finding time to write.

Which is why I’m taking from now through the end of November off from promotional activities to participate in National Write a Novel Month. I’ll post more details on my website in the next week or two